


Like Reflections upon a Polished Surface

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, Bittersweet, Canon Era, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e04 Replacements, Epistolary, F/M, Ghosts, Haunting, Healing, M/M, if h/c can be slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 16:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15867399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Lewis Nixon died in the dirt on the road outside Nuenen, but his ghost lingered beside his best friend and lover. A series of letters from Dick Winters to DeEtta Almon.





	Like Reflections upon a Polished Surface

**Author's Note:**

> This is a strange little story that I've been poking away at since I reread Rainer Maria Rilke's poem [Requiem for a Friend](https://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/3205/requiem-for-a-friend-rainer-maria-rilke) (translated by Stephen Mitchell here), and went, "Well, what if...." Several of my friends told me to get in the sadness box immediately, and not come out until I'd thought of something more cheerful. However, I kept turning over the idea, and then I got "haunted" on a square for h/c bingo, and here we all are.
> 
> Which is to say **I'm not kidding about the major character death warning.** Nix is dead by the start of the fic, and does not get better/come back during the rest of it. It is at the very best bittersweet. It includes Dick/Nix and Dick/DeEtta, and some made up kids. I'm grateful to anyone who reads this, and totally understand anyone who gives it a pass.
> 
> The next fic will be happier, I promise!

December 7th, 2009.  
Dear Bobbie and Bea,

This is a strange sort of letter to leave to one's daughters, and I have considered and reconsidered both writing it and what to include in it should I decide to do so. I wish that your mother were still alive, as she's always had a clear eye to these matters, much clearer than my own. Indeed, were DeEtta alive, and I were still the one dying, I should find myself tempted to leave this decision to her, as unfair as that might be.

The points in favor of not telling you will become obvious as you read. Contrary to popular movies, I do not believe that kids need know of their parents' past affairs. This goes double when the news they might be unsettling to them. (Although in these of what one is meant to call "out and proud," perhaps they will be less shocking.) More importantly, it seems unfair to leave children questioning their deceased parent's sanity. I imagine that you will learn from the following letters that I was not always as fair as I liked to portray myself, and certainly not the beatified warrior in that Ambrose book. (I considered writing my own book in reply, but in the end decided that I should either tell the entire truth as described in the enclosed letters, or remain silent. Cowardice is not something many now associate with my name, but only because that's also something I've kept quiet about.)

Having been set against this introduction, you girls are likely bracing for the worst sort of shock, so I will get the first part of it out of the way plainly: Between 1942 and 1944, I was engaged in an affair with a man named Lewis Nixon. He was fellow officer in the 101st Airborne, and my best friend. The affair was both sexual and romantic, and although I was writing to your mother at the time, I had begun to think of Lew as the great love of my life. In a strange way, that has proved to be true.

This does not mean that that I did not love your mother, or that our marriage was anything less than a true bond of love sworn before God. Had it not been for DeEtta's faithful correspondence, I doubt I would have survived the war after I lost Lew, and when I returned home, she pulled me out of the darkest funk I've ever known and saved me from a future of self-imposed isolation and grief. Reading back over those lines, it seems like she married me out of pity, and I her from gratitude, but that could not be further from the truth. As I hope you two have been able to observe over these long years of our marriage (almost six decades), we loved each other deeply, and I never for a minute regretted marrying DeEtta, even if I have at the same time always regretted losing Lew.

The second half of this family secret is best described by enclosing my letters to your mother. I'm sure that you've seen parts of this correspondence before, but we had omitted some letters from the family papers, chiefly those written between September 1944 and February 1945, as well as those written after my return Pennsylvania in October 1945 but before my marriage, and a single one sent from the Korean conflict. I'm sure the reasons for this will become obvious as you read. I'm sorry for choosing such a melodramatic means of conveying this story, but I cannot think of any other that would be at all credible.

All my love,  
Dad

* * *

September 22nd, 1944  
Dear DeEtta,

Well, we're in it again, up to our necks this time. ~~The fight has been~~

I don't know how else to say this but to just come out and write it: my friend Captain Lewis Nixon, Second Battalion's intelligence officer, ~~died~~ was killed yesterday. He caught a ricochet from a machine gun just outside of a little village called ██████. I heard it strike his helmet and saw him go down. He died in my arms seconds later. We were ████████ ████ and didn't have time to do more than throw his body in the back of a truck, like a sack of gravel. I should be writing his wife right now, but I don't know how. I feel like I should weep for him, but I don't know how to do that either.

I don't know how to eulogize Nix. He was my best friend, and he understood me, and I loved him.

Nix was liked well enough among the staff officers, but Harry Welsh and I were his only close friends. The men don't mourn him. I look around, and feel like every face should be written with grief, but their lives go on, and so therefore must my own. The work hasn't changed, even if it feels like the whole world has changed. I must continue to look after my men. We must continue to fight.

I'm sorry. This has been a poor sort of letter. I meant to send a better reply to your last, but my heart isn't in it. I will try again later.

Please keep us all in your prayers, but especially Lewis Nixon.

Warmest regards,  
Dick.

* * *

October 11th, 1944  
Dear DeEtta,

I appreciated your kind letter in response to my last. I liked what you said about the clarity of how much he meant to me, even if I didn't always speak well of him to you. I've been thinking of all the rotten things I said about him (and to him), and I regret many of them, even if they were true. Maybe I especially regret the true ones. It's good to hear that you could tell that I cared about him. The past few weeks have been challenging for me, and I've kept your words close. Harry Welsh has stuck by my side where he could, but I've never talked as freely with him as I did with Nix, or indeed with you. I have not yet gotten used to not seeing Nix at every turn. Sometimes, I still turn and think that I see him, just for a moment. I turn, and he's there, and I'm so glad I don't have words to describe it, but of course it's not him. Lewis Nixon died in ██████, and any shade of him that I see is nothing but wishful thinking.

You are probably tired of hearing me moping. I have good news, if you can call it that. Col. Sink decided to promote me to executive officer of Second Battalion. Fred Heyliger of the mortar platoon has taken over E Company, at least temporarily. So far my elevated rank has brought me the privilege of an extraordinary amount of paperwork. ~~If Nix~~ I'm sure you would have a good laugh to see this young trooper gamely battling battalions of requisition forms and inventory adjustments. All these darn things have numbers, and I don't know if I'm more afraid that I'll have them all memorized by the end of the month, or that I won't. They are starting to feature in my dreams!

Please write to me about something more interesting than the above.

Warmest regards,  
Dick

* * *

October 31, 1944  
Dear DeEtta,

Happy Halloween! Nothing really developing in that regard here. A couple of the fellows talked about a costume party, but nothing came of it past the occasional creative hat. We haven't had time for much in the way of fun lately.

Thank you for your letter dated the 22nd. I appreciated the report of the goings on in you church's Women's Society's Knitting for Victory Challenge. I had no idea how much effort and political energy went into sending us all socks! I shall wear mine with a new appreciation for the women of Asheville, North Carolina. Please tell them so.

I don't know if you hoped to shame me for complaining about an excess of paperwork in my last, but I assure you that paint drying in Antarctica would be more interesting than army supply forms, and you will never shake me of that conviction. Col. Strayer has begun to acquaint me with overseeing courts martial, which at least has proved more interesting, if no less tedious. I understand the purpose of the uniform code of military justice, and I believe in just punishment for violations thereof, but I must say that it's mighty hard to lay thirty days in the stockade on a trooper you were fighting shoulder to shoulder with not a month before. It is equally frustrating to watch good men driven to idiocy by idleness and boredom. I do not wish for combat, but this half state of holding a line and waiting has been hard on all of us. ███ ██████ ████████ █████████ ███ ██ ████ ███ ██████ ███ ██ ███ ████.

You asked in your last letter what I dream about when it's not army paperwork. A month ago I would have told you that I dreamed mostly of battle. I used to go to sleep with my mind worrying away at some tactical problem like a dog on a bone. I would dream of solutions, or of past battles. My mind, waking and sleeping, seems to belong to Uncle Sam, which isn't so bad a thing. Just because I came up with an idea in my dreams doesn't mean I'll turn it down.

These nights, I dream of my friend Nix. I close my eyes, and I see him on in the dirt outside Nuenen, blood pooling under his helmet, eyes wide and blank. When I can sleep, I don't dream of that moment, but I don't dream that my friend's alive, either. I dream that as I go through my day (courts martial, requisitions, reviews and the rest of it) Nix is there at my side. I know, even in the dream, that he isn't really there, that he's dead, but in the dream I'm followed by his ghost. He doesn't speak to me, but watches. I wish I could put into words the look in his eyes. I had always read that unquiet spirits were accusing, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, but there is no anger in Nix, not any more. I cannot shake the feeling that he wants something from me, but equally I cannot name what that something might be. It disturbs me beyond words.

I have written to his wife. Perhaps that will ease my thoughts. I ought not to have put that off for so long.

Thank you, incidentally, for your congratulations, but my advancement to battalion XO did not come with an elevation in rank, thus I hope to remain yours,  
Captain R. D. Winters

* * *

November 17th, 1944  
Dear DeEtta,

The situation in Holland remains the same as in my last letter (I'm sure you've read all about it in the news), save only that I have indeed memorized all of those darn form numbers. Such is the glamorous life of a captain in the parachute infantry. My mother, at least, is happy to hear that I am off the front line, and my father keeps calling me a lieutenant colonel (this is according to my sister's last letter). I'll have a rough time explaining that when I get home. Maybe I'll just stay over here until I make field grade. What do you say?

Could be that I'll be heading home to be sooner than I expected anyway, depending if the head shrinkers catch up with me. I have to tell someone about this, so I'm telling you. I don't need to say not to pass this on, but I am anyway (and hello to the censors!). I saw my friend Lewis Nixon last night. It was late, I was sitting at my desk typing a report, and I looked up and saw him standing at the edge of the pool of lamplight, as real as my typewriter. I blinked hard and pinched myself, thinking I must have somehow dozed off, but when I opened my eyes, Nix was still there. He was dressed as I'd last seen him, in ODs with his collar up to hide his bars, but without his helmet or that terrible head wound (thank God). His hair was rumpled as though he'd just gotten out of bed, and he hadn't shaved. This was how much detail I could see, DeEtta, and I swear I could see it. I will not describe the look in his eyes, save that it was the same pleading expression as he wears in my dreams. I called out to him, and he did not speak or gesture, made no move as if he'd heard me, but stood silently watching me. My orderly, hearing my voice, came up to see if I needed anything, and when I looked back to the corner Nix had been standing in, he was gone.

So there you have it, my friend. I am either going mad, or I'm being haunted. I much prefer the former, for even aside from the religious implications, if I've gone mad, then perhaps there is some help for it. If my best friend's soul has been stripped from him and sent neither to heaven nor to hell, then I don't know what to do.

I'm sorry so much of this letter has been taken up with such a strange business. I have no one else I can tell, and writing it has taken a weight off my heart. I considered not sending it at all, that it might best be burned, but have decided that you're a kind and intelligent friend, and can perhaps offer some advice. I am lost. Please keep my in your prayers.

Warmest regards,  
Dick

* * *

December 1st, 1944  
Dear DeEtta,  
The 101st has been rotated back to Mourmelon-le-Grand (in France, if you can't tell from the name) for much needed recuperation. We have received replacements, all of whom look to have lied about their age to enlist and are as green as envy. My old company is under a new officer, and I don't think he's much older. Thus spake R. D. Winters, from the profound wisdom of age twenty-six, of course. I can't imagine what we all look like to someone like Col. Sink, let alone Gen. Eisenhower, but I feel old, DeEtta.

I've been waiting for your latest letter to find me before I wrote again, hoping that you might have some advice on the particular situation that I described in my own last letter. I don't know why I did, perhaps it's because I have no ideas of my own. All of your suggestions (to sleep more, to lay off the coffee, to go to church and pray, to light a candle for Nix's soul) are all things I've tried already. And yet, ~~I still see him~~ I see him more and more often. He stands at my shoulder as he used to, or leans against the wall in the corner of my office, or sits on my footlocker in my billet. I dream of him, but still he does not speak. I have not heard his voice since he said my name as he was dying. Now he stands mute and pleading. What is it that he wants?

As you can see, I have become convinced that this is indeed a ghost, and not some crossed wire inside this thick skull of mine that's making me hallucinate. You suggested that I might be suffering from an excess of grief and perhaps even guilt. I can't argue that that's not true, DeEtta, but the rest of my life here goes forward just the same as always. I have ████ ████████ ██ ███ █████ ██ ███████ over the last five months, good men, many of whom I knew well. None were as dear to my heart as Nix, but I loved them all, yet their spirits do not trouble me. Were visions born of guilt to plague more generally, I'd have expected to see Dukeman, Hall and Meehan and all the rest, but I have not, only Nix. I can write reports, observe drills, inspect latrines, and hold any number of perfectly sane conversations, and no one looks at me like I need to be packed off to the funny farm, or seems to see my silent companion. Truly, I have missed me calling on the stage. You wouldn't believe how the awkward boy you met in North Carolina has turned into a Broadway-caliber actor, one who can pretend that life continues as normal while his best friend's ghost stares at him with wide brown eyes.

Or as normal as can be when we're all training to drop into enemy territory who knows when. I hope that we have a few months yet before that. Over the winter would be better still. ███ ███ ███ █████ █████ ███ █████.

At least the chow is better here, and there are hot showers and beds with good solid American pillows and blankets. Though it has been rainy and cold. It seemed to rain for our entire stay in Holland too.

There, I've talked about the weather, you can see how sane and reasonable I can appear!

I'm sorry. I know this is not what you expected out of a pen pal. I would not blame you if you put my letters in a box and never looked at them. I won't expect a reply, but I do ask permission to keep writing. I feel like I can talk to you, and there is no one else here.

Yours,  
Dick.

* * *

December 13th, 1944  
Dear DeEtta,

Still in Mourmelon, still raining. The camp is now a sea of mud, and then men are fractious and fighting. Too bad we don't have any Nazis here for them to go after. ~~I wish~~

I was deeply touched by your last letter. I cannot say how much your words mean to me. I still have Harry Welsh here, of course, but I cannot talk to him about any of this, and I think you are the only one who understands me at this point. Thank you for continuing to write, and please do not feel obligated to play along with my foolishness if you have better things to do with your time. I know most girls back home are writing to half a dozen fellows over here, and I really don't mind if you choose to focus your attention on another.

I did as you suggested and talked to Father Maloney, E Company's Catholic chaplain. Neither Nix nor I are Roman Catholic, but I could see the sense in the idea that their superstitions might have some weight. Anyway, I was out of better ideas. I swore him to secrecy before I would speak, though I doubt this is the strangest confession he has received over the last three years. He listened to my story very patiently, and then (disappointing all hopes of exorcisms and holy water) explained that the trouble was likely that I myself was unable to let go. He gave me the usual psychological bunk about guilt and refusal to face facts that I could have gotten from the medical corps' head shrinker. So much for that idea, but it was worth a shot. As long as my mother never finds out about going to a priest for advice, I suppose that all will be well and no harm done.

As you can likely deduce from the above, my situation remains unchanged. However, Harry Welsh has arranged for a two-day liberty in Paris, which is to begin tomorrow morning. I hope that if it really is just stress and guilt, perhaps some time off duty in gay pari and a quiet Christmas to follow will do me good. You can expect the next letter in flawless French. I hope you've been practicing.

Yours,  
Dick

* * *

January 22th, 1945  
Dear DeEtta,

I'm not dead. As you probably gathered from the news, the 101st did not have the quiet Christmas I'd hoped for. ~~I don't know~~ ~~It was~~ It seems like about all I can think to say about it is something the censors wouldn't let through for a number of reasons. However, I am not dead, and we held the line against all odds and what seemed like all the ammunition left in Germany. I don't know if you replied to my last letter. If you did, it hasn't found me yet. We're still fighting strong, still showing the Germans what paratroopers are made of, no matter what they throw in our direction. I'm weary to the bone, but the men need me to keep going, so I do. I'm incredibly proud of them all. █ ████ ████ ████ ████ ██ ████████. 

Nix has been with me this whole time. We lost Harry Welsh on Christmas Eve, wounded by a shell, and Buck Compton the week after to ~~battle~~ trench foot. He's been transferred to Paris, I think. I don't have much of anyone left to talk to here, so I talk to Nix's ghost when I can. The men catch me at it, when I'm not careful, but I try to keep it from them. I haven't had the paper or light or time to write to you until now.

I'm beginning to think that is why Nix has stayed instead of passing on to wherever his soul is bound. (Heaven, surely. I am a not righteous enough to separate the sheep from the goats, but I cannot think a man as generous or as loyal as him could go to hell). Maybe he knows that I need him if I am to survive this struggle, and he has stayed for my sake. Maybe his pleading is for my survival. As I write this, I'm sitting in the ruins of an abbey and the nuns are singing for the men downstairs. If there is ground more holy, I do not know where it is. Yet Nix is standing just at the edge of the lamplight, a shadow not quite of the shadows. If I sleep tonight, he will walk though my dreams.

I wish I could tell him that I don't need him, that he is free to move on, but I can't. I never thought I was the kind of man who was selfish enough to damn his best friend's soul because he was lonely, but it's true that a man learns his real metal in war, and this is mine.

I'm sorry; you are not my mother confessor or an agony aunt. I have little else to write about save war and death, and that is not the kind of thing I guy sends to his girl, and wouldn't pass the censors anyway. The other metal I've found seems to be all gun steel and powder. I'm a hard man when I'm at war, and have little patience for the frivolities of peacetime. I will have to learn them again if I get home.

I hope your letters find me soon. I miss reading them.

Yours,  
Dick

* * *

February 25th, 1945  
Dear DeEtta,

I got your letters all in a bundle today! They were waiting for us in Mourmelon-le-Grand when we got here. It's been over two months since I've had a word from you, and if I hadn't known that most of the other fellows were going without same as me, I would have wondered if you'd given up writing to this sad sack. I can't say I would have blamed you if you had. I know I haven't been the sort of correspondent you must have thought you were getting when we met in Asheville, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm glad you've kept on writing. I don't know how many other fellows get your letters, but I doubt any of the others were this close to weeping with relief when they heard the mail call.

I have some good news, at least. The 101st is off the line, hopefully for at least a month. The first thing every man did was sleep for two days solid. Most of them are still sacked out as I write this. I'm letting them. They've earned that and a thousand times more these past few months. The casualties in ████████ weren't as bad as they could have been, but I still see more replacements than veterans everywhere I look. Harry Welsh is back! I didn't realize how much I'd missed him until he showed up again. I actually hugged him. Boy, he was surprised! I was able to secure a battlefield commission for my First Sergeant Carwood Lipton, who is now a 2LT in E Company, and couldn't have deserved it more. I myself have been promoted, finally. Twice actually, first to the rank of major, and secondly to full command of what's left of Second Battalion. I must say that, aside from the gratification of having risen from platoon leader to battalion commander between now and D-Day, knowing exactly what my duties and responsibilities are is an immense relief.

Not seeing a much of Nix. Perhaps he will fade now that we are out of danger. I hope so. He, too, deserves to rest. Of course the invasion of Germany is coming up, and after that who knows. Japan? We're not out of this fight yet. I wish I were strong enough not to hold him here, if that's indeed what I'm doing, but I fear that I'll need him still. I cannot even say what the difference is between having a silent apparition for company and being alone. All I know is that there is one. You'll be glad to hear that I've stopped talking to him, at least. Camp's too crowded.

You asked me in your last letter what I'm planning to do when I get home. It's a fair question, but not one I have an answer to. I can't think about Pennsylvania, or my parents, or a job. I can't even really think about you, not in the way I imagine you'd want a fellow to think of you. I find all of my energy and what remains of my wits is going to keeping my men alive and in good fighting shape. When that changes, perhaps I will have have time to dream of peace. Maybe you can dream for the both of us.

I have the pleasure to sign this as,  
Major Richard D. Winters

* * *

October 1st,1945  
Dear De,

I imagine this letter will proceed me, but hopefully only just. I am at long last shipping home. I have run into one astonishingly dimwitted bit of army bunk after another, each one proportioning to explain to me why a man with one hundred and eight (108!) points could not return home with his men. However, you've heard more than enough whining from me on that topic (among others) over these last few months, and I really do mean this note to be short.

I'm to ship out next week, and plan to return to my family home in Lancaster for a few weeks' rest. I hope that after that I'll be able to drive down and meet up with you. Do you know how long you'll be in with the Waves? Send me a letter when they plan to spring you. It will be good to see you again. I know that you've been hoping for something from me when I get home, but I still don't know if I can offer anything other than friendship. I also don't know if you will still want to have anything to do with this trooper once you've seen what the war's turned him into. I haven't been writing as much as I should because I regret the man I am now (a short-tempered, intolerant sort of S.O.B.) without quite being able to change my own nature. It's a far cry from the shy and earnest young man you met in North Carolina a few years ago. I would hold nothing against you if you didn't want to so much as shake hands with the post-war version of R.D. Winters.

Especially given that this version still seems to be haunted. I have not written of Nix since my letters this past winter, somewhat in hope that pretending that he was not still with me and that everything was all right would somehow make that true. It hasn't. Nix still appears to me, and if he isn't here now it's only because of some whim of his own, or of the rules of whatever realm controls him. Maybe there's a reason that he's still hanging around. I've been thinking of one, but I can't lay it out here in the mail.

When we meet, I'll tell you the whole story, and you can decide what, if anything, you want to do with me after that. ~~I hope that.~~

I'll see you soon.

Yours,  
Dick

* * *

10 December 1945  
DE. MEET 16TH ST Y NOON 14 DEC. DICK.

* * *

9 January 1946  
Dear DeEtta,  
Hard to believe it's been three weeks since we met in Washington, D.C.! I've taken the time to think over what you said then. I'd like to thank you again for your generosity of spirit, and for your understanding. I've never told anyone what I told you then, and I doubt I'll ever tell anyone else. I don't know what to make of that, either. I know a fellow shouldn't disagree with a lady, but we've always been friends, so I'll just say that I think you were wrong when you told me that you could see the same man in me as you met before. Maybe you're not as observant as you like to think. I know that I'm roughly a hundred years old, and a not worth anyone's time, let alone hand in marriage. You keep talking about marriage, and all I can do is wonder what kind of husband I would make.

Let's set that aside for now.

Today, I did as you suggested and went to the Nixon family graves in New Jersey. I knelt there in that gaudy Episcopalian cemetery and prayed for Nix's soul. I told him silently everything I'd told you and the truth in the deepest part of my heart. Then I begged for his forgiveness: for letting him die, for not knowing what he wanted, for not being brave enough to truly talk to him before it was too late. I prayed to God to carry Nix up among the elect, and to not hold my sins against his soul. I wept then, there on my knees surrounded by Nixon graves, and after I felt cleansed.

Then I looked up and saw Nix standing in the shadows of the church. I've tried to describe the way he looks before, but find I don't have the words for it. He was like a shadow standing just outside of the shadows, an extension of them maybe. In the glare of noon, he looked like he was a trick of the light, save that if he was a mirage, he was one with a form and a face. I had hoped that were I to see him in that place, it would would be a last glimpse of him at peace before being taken up. However, he still wore that expression of pleading, and he did not fade until I rose to leave. He sit beside me in the family car all the way back to Lancaster. I have no doubt that he will visit my dreams tonight, as he almost always does.

I have no more idea what he wants now than I did the first day he appeared to me, and I no have no particular hope of ever finding out. It seems as though these two old war buddies are stuck together to the end of the line, wherever that turns out to be.

I think I'll travel for a while. I have enough saved to get my own car, and have no particular ties to Pennsylvania, or anywhere else. I can work odd jobs for food along the way. Nix and I talked about traveling after the war, if we made it home, of going sailing maybe. I think I'll make good on that. I no longer have any illusions that it will shake his spirit loose, but perhaps I will find some kind of satisfaction in it.

Warmest regards,  
Dick

* * *

15 January 1945  
DE. RECD UR TEL. WILL WAIT. DICK.

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Almon  
request the honor of your presence  
at the marriage of their daughter  
DeEtta Catherine  
to  
Major Richard Davis Winters  
on Thursday, January the thirty-first  
Nineteen hundred and forty-six  
at four o'clock  
Church of the Holy Trinity  
Asheville, North Carolina

* * *

March 10th, 1952  
Dearest,

The army hasn't been giving me much time to get letters written. Maybe I'm too old to be running around after 19-year-old officer candidates, but this old dog still has some fight in him yet.

We just got back from spending a solid week in the field. I'll say it was a welcome change from trying to teach these puppies anything in the classroom. Maybe it's plain nostalgia, but I don't remember being so darn feckless when I was in OCS. If any of us had shown half the lack of attention, we'd have been out on our behinds before our heads could turn 'round. ~~Heck, even Nix~~

I know we've agreed not to talk about this, and I'm sorry for bringing it up, especially as it means that you will have to put this letter in the other collection, not the one the kids will see. I'll write another as soon as I can keep my eyes open for more than five minutes at a stretch. Anyway, as I always said, "I have to tell someone, and that someone might as well be De." Sorry to make you my agony aunt yet again, but you can't say you didn't know what you were signing up for. With all that preamble, you've pretty well figured out by now that I mean Nix. I seem to see him more often now. It seems stranger here somehow, maybe because he's the only one in the old uniform, just standing in the shade watching me try to lick these kids into shape. Maybe it's because I've aged, and he's still twenty five and always will be. My feelings haven't changed, even after so long: I still miss him like crazy, and I'm still so darn sorry for what happened. I will take that to my grave, and maybe I'll meet him there, or maybe we'll wander about together, two lost souls.

I was thinking the other day about what Jesus said when they asked whose wife that woman would be in heaven, and how Our Lord told everyone that in the resurrection there would be no flesh and we wouldn't really be married any more anyway. It always seemed to me that couldn't quite be right. It seems to me like when two souls are as close as yours and mine, that they would stay joined somehow even after our bodies are gone, but I wonder about that woman and her seven husbands. If she loved all of them, wouldn't they all be with her? Maybe it would be jealousy and envy that wouldn't survive the death of flesh. Clearly, I'm no theologian. You've likely worked it out. You always had a better head for this kind of thing.

I do love you. I know that I wrote during the last war that I didn't know what romantic love was, and I couldn't put a name to the feeling. I think back then I was afraid to admit that I'd already known it and lost it, and it hurt too much to think about knowing it again. I do now. Never think for a minute that I don't, or that our vows six years ago don't mean the world to me. I don't know what would have become of this poor trooper if you hadn't come up to Lancaster that winter and talked some sense into him. I don't know what will become of him now, but I still have some hope of getting out before shipping out.

But for God's sake, if you die before I do, promise not to haunt me. One is more than enough.

I'll write again soon.

All my love,  
Dick.

* * *

December 26th, 2009  
Dear Bobbie and Bea,

I'd been planning on leaving that bundle as it stood, but I decided at last to include a final note. I think this may have been my last Christmas on Earth, and it's been a good one. At the end of the road, I have a heck of a lot of regrets, but none about you two or how you turned out. In case you're worried, DeEtta is not also haunting me, though Nix still is. I think his expression's softened over the years, or maybe I've just gotten used to it. It doesn't seem so much like he wants something from me. He just is.

My hope is that my death will release his ghost, and he can move on to wherever it is we're meant to be when our bodies fail and our spirits leave them. However, given that nothing else has been able to shift him in the past sixty-five years, I guess I'm just hoping that he won't attach himself to one of you girls. There's supposed to be a haunted Nixon family home in New Jersey somewhere, so it could be that he'll head out there. Maybe Nix and I will wander the Earth together. I wonder what we'll get up to if we do. He always used to say he had plans for us after the war, and all my wars are over now. I think I might head over and haunt that Ambrose fellow, and see what he makes of me. He did say he wanted an interview from Major Winters and never got one.

I am not planning to haunt anyone, but you never know. I can't imagine Nix was thinking he'd stick around this long either, so consider this due notice!

I hope I told you that I loved you a hundred more times before the end, but if I didn't, here it is again. I love you, my beautiful girls. I wish I could spend another sixty years watching you grow and watching your children grow. I hope you remember me fondly.

All my love,  
Dad


End file.
